Chapter 2: The Five-Year Game

Julian and I met at Northshore Academy and dated for four years.

He was the picture of old-blood Grayhaven privilege. The Hawthorne name opened doors among the coastal packs, and he was Stonebridge’s next Alpha.

To him, I was the wildcat from Red Mesa. I’d never had a wolf awakening after coming of age—I couldn’t shift, and I had no wolf inside me. He looked down on that flaw, yet he was fascinated by the part of me that refused to bow.

He never rejected the she-wolves who circled him. He’d just smile and tell me he liked watching me get jealous.

Over those four years, my insecurity festered. I had no wolf, yet I was more guarded than anyone who did. I was wary of every woman who got close to him, and each time my reaction was fiercer than the last.

On graduation day, I proposed to him.

He leaned against the railing by the academy river and lit a cigarette, smoke veiling his handsome, distant face.

Clara, I’m not ready to settle down, he said slowly. If we marry, you’ll have the status of a Hawthorne wife, and our families will sign an alliance. But can you accept that I might have other women? The old coastal bloodlines don’t consider loyalty a necessity.

I thought he was joking.

I thought it was cold feet.

Until the sixth day after our wedding.

In our new house in Grayhaven’s Old Town, I saw him with my own eyes: in our bed, with a blonde she-wolf.

He didn’t even stop when he saw me. He caught the scent of my shock and rage, and a cruel, excited smile spread across his face.

I lost control.

I screamed and smashed everything in the room I could get my hands on. It wasn’t the silent protest the coastal packs preferred. It was pure, direct Red Mesa fury.

The woman panicked and called the Stonebridge patrol.

The next day, Julian and I were on the society pages of the Grayhaven Chronicle. The report said nothing about an Alpha heir betraying his new bride. It only went on and on about the dangerous, unstable southern wolfless woman.

That was the day Julian created his annual game.

The Winter Moon Thanksgiving banquet invitation.

He claimed that only once I learned to control myself would he take me to Tidewatch and register me as a Luna candidate before the matriarch and elders.

After listening to me cry, Wyatt made a single bet with me.

If Julian still refused to take me to Tidewatch after five years, Wyatt would come to Grayhaven himself and take me home—and make the Hawthornes pay for wasting Red Mesa’s trust.

At the time, I thought it would be easy.

The first year, he chose a dancer from the moon banquet.

Julian really did take her into Tidewatch’s century-old main house. The doors that symbolized the center of Stonebridge power opened for her, but stayed shut for me.

I waited in Grayhaven’s early winter snow all night and ended up in the pack clinic with a high fever.

The second year, it was a lecturer in bloodline history.

Julian posted a family dinner photo on the pack’s public channel. The woman stood smiling beside his mother, seated in the seat meant for the future Luna.

Meanwhile, I was alone with a cold pizza, crying so hard I couldn’t breathe.

After that, I went to the Stonebridge Hall of Oaths and stood before the black stone where every previous Luna had sworn her vows, hoping the next year would finally be mine.

The third year. The fourth year.

And this year, the fifth.

The chosen one still wasn’t me.

I had become a running joke in every high-ranking pack in Grayhaven. A loser trading southern stubbornness for the approval of old coastal blood.

I accepted it.

I didn’t want to be a Hawthorne anymore.

I picked up my phone and opened my chat with Wyatt.

Wyatt, come get me early. I still can’t get used to Grayhaven seafood chowder.